About 300 health staff from the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital are calling for children to be released from immigration detention centres.
They unveiled a banner outside the hospital, in Brisbane’s south, about lunchtime urging the Federal Government to act.
Organiser Dr Melanie Jansen said medical professionals have lobbied for years with no meaningful change.
Inspired by a similar stance taken by colleagues in Melbourne a few weeks ago, Dr Jansen said they now felt compelled to speak publicly.
“Detention centres are not places where children’s well-being are being promoted,” she said.
“Staff at our children’s hospital have seen children with post-traumatic stress disorder, attempted suicides, developmental delays, recurrent nightmares, anxiety-related bed-wetting, failure to thrive, a whole range of problems that’s well documented in the medical literature.
“We’ve written open letters, published journal articles, but we haven’t been able to achieve meaningful change.